Oi! Take your gel packets home with you!

[PK99]

Energy gels are so unnecessary. In the old days, we kept a potato in our shorts and nibbled on it if we were hungry. .

I keep nuts in my shorts.

 

[Old Steve]

That's an admirably conciliatory tone, but I'm afraid he lost my respect for good when he decided to start bragging about his wealth. That's not polite at all.

Sadly mate you lost all of my respect when you said

Have you ever tried to put a used gel wrapper back in your pocket? It's fiddly and messy, you end up with sticky goo all over your hands and then the dregs seep through your jersey and make your back really uncomfortable. Much easier to just toss it.

Edited, I cant even believe I am getting involved with a conversation like this..

 

[winjim]

Comprehension fail

 

[Dogtrousers]

Embarrassed silence.

Ahem.

Now, about those gel wrappers. What do you think? A bloomin' disgrace, eh?

 

[John the Monkey]

Sadly mate you lost all of my respect when you said

Have you ever tried to put a used gel wrapper back in your pocket? It's fiddly and messy, you end up with sticky goo all over your hands and then the dregs seep through your jersey and make your back really uncomfortable. Much easier to just toss it.

Edited, I cant even believe I am getting involved with a conversation like this..

 

[Ajax Bay]

The fact that they (the FRP) did a post event litter sweep and collected a lot of gel wrapper tear off bits but very few wrappers could also suggest that the vast majority of competitors in the London Duathlon (or whatever event) did stow their wrappers (sticky or not) or that the organiser sweep up was pretty thorough. Perhaps we could benefit from an analysis (over a period) of the detritus extracted from the poor dead deer's stomachs to see what proportion of the plastic found is gel wrapper/tear offs and how much is shopping bags and general (ie not 'cyclist') litter? Cyclists need good technique to avoid ripping the tear off bit right off (in their teeth) so the wrapper complete can be stowed. Once the full rip off has been made, i suspect a lot of people will be tempted to just spit it away, even if they know they shouldn't. Fair to say the little tear offs are more difficult to spot when clearing up. Upthread it was suggested that a response/mitigation to this hazard could be redesign of the gel wrappers making one side (opposite the tear off 'nick') much stronger which would reduce the incidence of 'full tear off'.
For the avoidance of doubt, like most if not all on this thread, I depreciate the dropping of any litter and personally do my best not to, and embarras my children occasionally by remonstrating with litter droppers. Real food for me, not gels, anyway. 600km on gels will get a result, but probably not the one one looks forward to.

Think @Cubist had it about right:

It's a daily wail article.
The race was organised and had litter pickers laid on.
The litter pickers failed to pick the litter.
The deer in the photo was wearing a Tesco bag.
The stomach contents from the dead deer were not gel wrappers.
BUT
In the minds of the average wail reader, cycling in Richmond Park kills deer. Fantastic.

If:
1) @winjim hadn't gone for the (personally I took it tongue in cheek / trolling for effect) admission he was a 'tosser' (subsequently denied, please note: see post #59)
and 2) after an image (assume of the Brighton (half?) marathon) was used to illustrate that in road running races (not a sportive) people toss paper cups (to be expected and cleared up by the organisers) funded by the exorbitant entry fee
and 3) you'd made the point about image copyright @Old Steve , with subsequent argument
and 4) @winjim ("I'm just being a bit silly") played the 'but you're not really happy' card and you reacted ill-advisedly
THEN we wouldn't have been able to enjoy 7 pages of this meandering thread.

 

[mjr]

Are you aunt John or do you have their permission?

 

[Dogtrousers]

Stop abusing the image rights of cute kittens.

 

[Smokin Joe]

Anyone who can't manage to put an empty wrapper in their pocket while riding has one simple solution. Stop by the side of the road, eat your food and then put the wrapper in your pocket before you mount up again.

Unless you're soft enough in the head to believe the Wobbly Wheelers sportive really is a road race, of course...

 

[mjr]

Stop by the side of the road, eat your food and then put the wrapper in your pocket before you mount up again.

That's why our sportive bikes look like this:

Annoys the heck out of roadies when we scalp them on the climbs, stop at the top and spread out the picnic blanket and check cloth...

 

[briantrumpet]

Already been done, as a kid in the sixties my main source of income was collecting all the discarded pop & beer bottles and taking them to the newsagent/off licence to get the deposit back.

One of my cheekiest moments was following finding a crate of Usher's beer, only about 3 bottles broken, at the side of a road on a bend - it truly had fallen off the back of a lorry, I reckoned. Anyway, I drank the beer, then took the bottles to a shop to claim the deposits (and got them). Well, I was much poorer then...

 

[adamangler]

Have you ever tried to put a used gel wrapper back in your pocket? It's fiddly and messy, you end up with sticky goo all over your hands and then the dregs seep through your jersey and make your back really uncomfortable. Much easier to just toss it.

Sadly I agree. I hate putting the sticky thing in my back pocket.

 

[mjr]

Sadly I agree. I hate putting the sticky thing in my back pocket.

We were taking about gel packets, not contortionism!

 

[Ajax Bay]

Sadly I agree.

Please may I refer you to @winjim 's 'I'm being silly' policy statement at post #59, providing context to his early contribution to this thread and some serious (and imo valid) points.

I'm mainly just being silly, but within the silliness there are a few serious points.

 

[winjim]

Please may I refer you to @winjim 's 'I'm being silly' policy statement at post #59, providing context to his early contribution to this thread and some serious (and imo valid) points.

It's also become a nice little study to compare what people think they have read to what they have actually read.

In terms of the OP, the story seems to have become more interesting as more details have emerged throughout the course of the thread - see your post #100 and reference to @Cubist 's post. This information was unknown to me when I began my silliness as it wasn't presented that way in the OP and I wasn't about to dirty myself by following a link to the Daily Mail. It does bring up wider issues surrounding plastic waste, anti-cyclist attitudes, responsibilities of event organisers and participants etc etc